The present paper analyses the decision-making processes leading to the Council's adoption of a common set of ‘flexicurity principles' in December 2007. The paper follows the process all the way from the first references to the term in the employment guidelines early in the present decade, through the green paper of labour law and the expert group of flexicurity towards the Commission's proposal for the common principles and the adoption of the final version of the principles. The analysis shows: 1) that coalitions have played an important role in the decision-making process leading up to the adoption of the common flexicurity principles, although the member states, the national and European social partners, and the European Parliament, obviously also have influenced the process individually. 2) That the two coalitions localised in decision-making processes on European employment policy earlier in the decade - the ‘minimalist coalition' and the ‘regulation coalition' - can still be found, but that a number of important changes in relation to these coalitions have been taken place recently. 3) That the coalitions only to a limited extent fit expectations from regime theories. The coalitions are fewer than the regimes and cut to some extent across the usual division of countries, in that Scandinavian and the Anglo-Saxon countries form the core of one of the coalitions, whereas a number of continental countries - Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Greece and Spain - are now found in the core of the other coalition.